Former Oakland mob associate Leonard Schultz dies in Florida

Leonard Schultz, a former Oakland County resident and high-ranking Detroit mob associate — possibly connected to the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance and likely the final link to the legendary Purple Gang — was laid to rest in Florida last week.Schultz, 96, was a convicted felon and drug dealer, as well as a popular local businessman and a labor consultant for the Teamsters union at the peak of its power. He died of natural causes on Sept. 6.
His funeral was held Sept. 9 in Pompano Beach, Fla., the city he where maintained residence since the early 2000s.Schultz’s name surfaced in a pair of notorious gangland-murder investigations in metro Detroit in the 1970s, both unsolved and both of which he vehemently denied involvement in.First in 1974, the FBI looked at him as a suspect in the homicide of Harvey Leach, owner of the trendy Joshua Door Furniture Company. Federal investigators believe Leach was on his way to meet Schultz at Schultz’s Franklin Village home the day he was killed. He was found with his throat slit in the trunk of his car in a Southfield parking lot.The following year, according to federal records, he was alleged to have been one of the men Hoffa was scheduled to meet at the Machus Red Fox restaurant (now Joe Vicari’s Andiamo Tuscan Steakhouse) on Telegraph Road in Bloomfield Hills, the afternoon he disappeared on July 30, 1975.The FBI considered Hoffa, the one-time Teamsters president, and Schultz — diminutive, jovial and known by such monikers as “Sports Club Lenny,” “Left-hand Lenny” and “Little Lenny” — to be business associates and social companions.More than one federal informant tagged Schultz as someone who helped broker the purported “sit down” between Hoffa and mob leaders Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone of Detroit and Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano of New Jersey, a ruse to lure Hoffa out into the open to be slain.Per the FBI’s famed HOFFEX memo, in the hours before he went missing, Hoffa told a mutual acquaintance that he “was going to meet Lenny and the two Tonys at the Red Fox.” None of them showed, except Hoffa, who subsequently vanished.Lenny and the “two Tonys” had airtight alibis, with Giacalone, the Detroit mob’s longtime street boss, and Schultz being seen together the entire day at Giacalone’s headquarters, the now-closed Southfield Athletic Club on 11 Mile and Evergreen in the Travelers Towers office building. The Southfield Athletic Club was owned and run by Schultz and his two sons.FBI and Detroit Police Department documents connect Schultz to Abe “Abie the Agent” Zussman, the once heavily feared Purple Gang lieutenant, when he was a young up-and-comer in the local underworld during the 1930s and ‘40s. The Purple Gang was a nationally feared Jewish mob that ruled the city during Prohibition.Born in Detroit in 1917 and graduating from Northern High School, Schultz was mentored by Zussman early in his career, learning the ropes on the streets from him before emerging as a relied-upon figure in area Italian mob circles in the 1950s, specifically in the Giacalone camp. Because he was Jewish, Schultz could not become a “made” man, an official member of the mafia.In 1985 at the age of 67 he was arrested and eventually convicted of conspiring to sell 10 kilos of cocaine. It was his third felony conviction — the other two being for arson and receiving stolen property — and he served five years in prison.“Lenny was a real character,” said a retired FBI agent who used to follow him and Giacalone around on a daily basis. “He was one of the more trusted non-Italian members in the city’s organized crime family. Tony Giacalone had faith in him and that said a lot and put a lot of power behind him.“When you looked at Lenny, he was a small guy, but he wasn’t afraid to challenge people and throw his weight around when he had to. He ran with the top guys and he was respected because of it.”While fighting his drug case in court, Schultz admitted to being an FBI informant. Released from prison in 1993, he stayed clear of trouble with the law until his death.His son, Jeffrey, was fast to tell reporters prior to the funeral how much he loved his dad and what he meant to him.“You know the history about him, that’s public record, but I’ll tell you what, he was the greatest father in the world.”

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About the Author

Scott Burnstein writes also athttp://burneysbytes.blogspot.com/ and covers Detroit area crime, with his latest book, "The Detroit True Crime Chronicles: Tales of Mayhem and Murder in the Motor City." Reach the author at hoosierscott@aol.com
or follow Scott on Twitter: @burneystweets.